The Birth of the American Military-Industrial Complex - in 1847

The Birth of the Military-Industrial Complex

Ned Barnett
(c) 2008

As he was preparing to retire from public life, President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned America against the growing power and influence of the “Military-Industrial Complex.” As the General of the Army who defeated Hitler and oversaw the creation of NATO, then as the President who faced down the newly nuclear-armed Soviets for eight long years, Ike knew something about the Military-Industrial Complex.

However, most of his audience – the American people – assumed that this Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) was something new, and dangerous. After all, that’s what the 50s were about – things that were new, and dangerous. H-Bombs. Sputnik. Polaris submarines. Jet bombers and ICBMs. All new, all dangerous.

In fact, the MIC began more than 100 years before Eisenhower was elected President, and indirectly, we owe this all to a man more famous for inventing the cotton gin, Eli Whitney – and more directly, to a former Texas Ranger.

As a young man, Whitney came up with the idea of manufacturing interchangeable parts, and applied that to the production of muskets for the U.S. Army. Before Whitney’s innovation, muskets were hand-made. When a part broke, a skilled gunsmith had to make and carefully fit a replacement part. Whitney changed all that – and started the idea of a production line, which was perfected a century later by Henry Ford.

Whitney died in 1820, but he left a legacy of innovation and a family interest in the manufacture of precision firearms. In this way, he laid the groundwork for the salvation of a bankrupt inventor, and the creation of what we now know as the Military Industrial Complex.

In the early 1830s, inventor Samuel Colt perfected the first practical revolver – a five-shot weapon named the Paterson, after the town in New Jersey where Colt made these handguns. They first became popular in the mid-1830s when US officers fighting in the Seminole War in Florida bought them to replace cumbersome Army-issued single-shot pistols that were little different from what George Washington had used 60 years before.

It wasn’t long after the Seminole war before the Colt Paterson was adopted by the Texas Rangers – not officially, but again, individual Rangers gladly bought them out of pocket. They knew it was worth a man’s life to have firepower close at hand, and a brace of Colt’s revolvers could replace ten single-shot pistols. In 1844, in what became the legendary Hays Fight, a skirmish that included Seminole War veteran Samuel H. Walker, 15 Texas Rangers defeated an 80-warrior Comanche War Party in a stand-up fight – in Walker’s words, “… killing & wounding about half of them. With improvements, I think the Colt revolvers can be rendered the most perfect weapon in the world.”

When the Mexican War broke out two years later, Walker was mustered into the Army as a Captain, and set out to recruit a unit of Dragoons – men who rode into combat on horseback. However – unlike the cavalry, who fought on horseback – Dragoons dismounted to fight. Having carried his personal Paterson Colt into war in Florida and into countless skirmishes in Texas, Captain Walker wanted his men to be armed with this new innovation. Walker scoured the countryside for privately owned Paterson Colts – there were few to be had – and he also contacted their inventor, Sam Colt, asking for more. But in 1842, Sam Colt had gone belly-up – he’d never stopped designing improvements for his Paterson Colt, but he was in no position to manufacture them.

A little thing like bankruptcy wasn’t about to stop Walker, however, and Colt was more than happy to encourage him. Still, there was this little problem of no money – and no factory.

Enter Eli Whitney, Jr., son of the inventor of the cotton gin and the first man to mass-produce firearms. For “a consideration,” Whitney agreed to front Colt the money to get him back into business, and to provide him a corner of Whitney’s production line in Whitneyville, Connecticut. That line was busy making muskets for the Army – there was, after all, a war on – but the factory was not too busy to also manufacture Colt’s revolvers. So the famous “Whitneyville-Walker Colt – officially the US Model 1847 – was born. This was the first repeating handgun purchased by Army Ordnance, and it was revolutionary. In the years to come, Colt kept instituting improvements, until – by 1860 – his Army revolver had become the standard U.S. Army sidearm, one widely used by both sides in the US Civil War.

This massive handgun – the largest ever made for the US Army – tipped the scales at 4 pounds, 9 ounces. It was a five-shot weapon that fired a .44 caliber lead ball, propelled by 220 grains of black powder – a mule-kick that even “Dirty Harry” would love. A contemporary Army report on a test of the Colt revolver said that the Mode 1847 was “as effective as a common rifle at one hundred yards, and superior to a musket even at two hundred.” This was at a time when the standard military musket was never fired at ranges beyond 60 yards, and then only in volleys, since muskets lacked rifling and could not be aimed – at any range.

The government ordered 1,000 of Colt’s Model 1847 at $25 a revolver, plus another $3 for matching powder flasks. Colt actually made 1,100 of these handguns, using the other 100 as VIP gifts. These were presented to the President, senior members of Congress, the Secretary of War and other influential men of the times. Colt knew how to keep the orders coming – and except for laxer laws about gifts to officials, he did nothing different than today’s K-Street bandits do every day of the week for their MIC clients.

Here’s how these remarkably innovative Model 1847s worked in combat. A unit of Dragoons – roughly 100 men – would ride on horseback up to within roughly 100 yards of a Mexican Army unit, then dismount. That 100-yard distance was the effective aimed-fire range of the Whitneyville-Walker Colt. The force they’d attack would be generally from five to ten times as large as the Dragoon unit – roughly 500 to 1,000 well-trained and courageous Mexican soldiers. These enemies were a formidable force, since at that time, the Mexican Army was world-class in every respect. It was a classic “Napoleonic” army of hard-marching, hard-fighting professional soldiers, trained up in the traditional European “continental” system of fighting. However, the Mexican Army had one critical drawback – one shared with all armies of the time. They used a smooth-bore musket with an effective range of just 60 yards – and at that range, these muskets couldn’t be aimed, but only volley-fired.

However, the Colt could accurately fire aimed shots out to 100 yards. Approaching the enemy, the dismounted Dragoons would take careful aim and fire five quick shots per revolver, then mount up and withdraw – and reload. Since Dragoons often carried two revolvers per man, this meant they could loose 10 aimed shots in a matter of seconds. But because the Mexicans were out of range for their own weapons, those brave soldiers could either “take it” or they could fix bayonets and charge, hoping to cross 40 yards of ground, form up and volley-fire before the Americans pulled back. They were brave, and usually charged – however, in full gear, they could never charge fast enough to catch the Americans.

To reload the Whitneyville-Walker Colt, the entire cylinder could be easily removed from the gun’s frame. This meant – if the Dragoons had several pre-loaded cylinders per revolver – that the entire unit could reload their two-per-man weapons in about a minute, then ride back into battle. Again, they’d stop 100 yards out from the winded and increasingly demoralized Mexican soldiers, fire their quick five or 10 rounds of aimed fire, then again withdraw to reload their cylinders. As long as their powder and cast-lead bullets held out, those Dragoons could keep this up indefinitely – without risk of injury to themselves – but with deadly impact on the Mexican soldiers.

That is why Captain Walker so desperately wanted those Colt revolvers for his Dragoons. These five-shot revolvers were the first example of firepower being used as a “force multiplier” – a common concept today, but one totally unknown before 1846.

There’s a sad footnote to this story: Captain Sam Walker died in combat before the revolver that bore his name could be delivered to his unit. Yet Captain Walker lived long enough to create a dual legacy – he re-launched Colt Patent Firearms Company, which still makes precision firearms for the US Army today, and he served as midwife to the birth of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Using Coal for Jet Fuel - A "New" Technological Innovation that was Pioneered in Nazi Germany more than Six Decades Ago

(c) 2008 - Ned Barnett

Recently, I was interviewed by Douglas Page for an article in "Airport Business" on what is supposed to be a "new" technology - but which is actually about 70 years old. This involves the use of coal to create aviation fuel ... something the Nazis did in the late 30s and early 40s when they ran short of petroleum during the war ...

January 10th, 2007 02:13 PM EDT
Exploring Coal-Based Jet Fuel
A radical new source of jet fuel that's comparable
to jet-A and military JP-8 may become a marketplace reality

While Penn State's JP900 fuel was developed for use in high-performance military aircraft, there are no compelling technical barriers to prevent coal-based fuel from being used in commercial jetliners.

Combustion tests have shown that coal-based JP900 meets or exceeds almost all specifications for military JP8 and commercial Jet A jet fuels.

Tests show that coal-based JP900 has a flash point higher than required for JP8, a lower viscosity and freezing point, and a higher smoke point. The coal-based fuel is also lower in aromatics—compounds such as benzene and toluene—than conventional jet fuels and is almost sulfur-free.

With political and economic forces creating turmoil in the petroleum market, other potential fuel sources are being explored. One is the potential to turn coal into jet fuel for aircraft, explored here. This article originally appeared in our sister publication, Ground Support Worldwide.

University researchers have successfully powered a helicopter jet engine with fuel derived from at least 50 percent bituminous coal, a percentage that could go half again as high.

"We have shown in tests that the mix can go to at least 75 percent coal," explains Harold H. Schobert, professor of fuel science and director of Penn State University's Energy Institute.

The fuel, provisionally named JP900, is produced in one of two processes under investigation by Schobert. Both processes use light cycle oil, a petroleum byproduct, and coal-derived refined chemical oil, a byproduct of the coke industry. The researchers mix those two components and then add hydrogen. When distilled, jet fuel seeps off as a distillate.

Schobert's coal-based fuel provides several advantages over existing military and commercial jet fuel.

"Combustion tests show that JP900 meets or exceeds almost all specification for JP-8 and jet-A," Schobert says. Schobert presented his results at the March meeting of the American Chemical Society in Atlanta.

These tests showed that JP900 has a flash point higher than required for JP-8, a lower viscosity and freezing point, and a higher smoke point. The coal-based fuel is also lower in aromatics compounds such as benzene and toluene, than conventional jet fuels and is almost sulfur free.

From an energy point of view, JP900 produces almost exactly the same BTU as JP-8.

Coal-based fuels could also reduce dependence on imported petroleum for jet fuel purposes by about one-half, a benefit looking all the more attractive now that the price of oil has soared to all-time highs.

A Military Beginning

Schobert's project began originally to develop jet fuel for the next generation of high performance military aircraft that would require thermally stable fuels. The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research is funding this work, with help from the Department of Energy.

"Initially, the goal of this research was to develop a fuel that could also be used as a heat sink on board aircraft, in addition to the obvious role of providing the propulsion energy," Schobert says.

Such a fuel would be useful for the F-22, Joint Strike Fighter and F-35. However, according to Schobert, in the recent past, the Air Force has suggested that the focus be shifted to the development of a "drop in" coal-based replacement for current JP-8.

While the JP900 fuel was created for and funded by the military, it could eventually find its way into the wing tanks of commercial jetliners.

Tailoring this fuel to meet JP-8 specifications basically means that it would also be equivalent to jet-A or jet A-1. Therefore, it could be used, in principle at least, as a replacement for those current commercial fuels.

Schobert says that commercialization depends on two factors. The first is being able to 'qualify' the fuel for use and the second is economics.

"We do not yet have a solid economic evaluation of this fuel," Schobert explains. One of the refiners in the private sector has said it would want to make 50,000 barrels of fuel, equivalent to running 5,000 barrels per day for ten days, to get reliable engineering data on which to base an economic analysis.

That much production is beyond the present scope of the project.

So far, Schobert has produced only 500 gallons of a prototype fuel, and that was shipped to the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, for testing. The results of that work included the successful operation of a T-63 turboshaft engine.

"I can tell you that two major U.S. airlines have expressed some interest in this fuel and I have briefed some fairly high-level managers from one of them," Schobert says. Schobert declined to name the airlines, but says they are national or international carriers.

A coal-based jet fuel intrigues some aviation experts.

"If JP900 is found to be a proper replacement for jet-A (which is kerosene-based), it is conceivable that the jet fleet could eventually switch over to the new fuel after FAA certification," comments Will Alibrandi, an Aero Gas Turbine Analyst for the aviation market analysis firm, Forecast International.

Alibrandi says the big obstacle will be the cost to produce the fuel, compared to the petro-based jet fuels currently being used.

Schobert says the process that creates JP900 can be carried out in existing refineries with some retrofitting, and small amounts of the leftover components will feed into various portions of the petroleum stream. The lighter portions will go to the pool of chemicals that make gasoline and the heavier ones go to the diesel or fuel oil streams.

"The advantages of JP900 would have to be weighed against the cost and environmental considerations, although the applications for such a fuel could be wide ranging," Alibrandi says.

Socialist Technology

This is not the first time coal has been used to produce fuel. In the late 1930s, one of the ways Hitler's National Socialist Party sought economic self-sufficiency for Germany was to replace imported oil with an alternative fuel derived from domestic coal.

When the Allies bombed German oil refineries, the Germans were forced to put the technology into operation. By the end of World War II, they were producing millions of barrels of coal-based fuels.

"It is amazing that we are only now considering replicating technology that existed in production format 60 or more years ago," comments military technology veteran Ned Barnett. Barnett says that as long as petroleum was relatively cheap and plentiful, there was no incentive to confront the entrenched oil industry with alternative technologies.

"After the second OPEC oil embargo, we flirted with many alternate technologies during the Carter years, but once OPEC's back was broken as an effective price-fixing force, those initiatives died away, even when they worked and made sense," he says.

Since cheap, plentiful oil is a thing of the past, one solution may lie in coal-based fuels.

"We clearly have more coal than oil," Barnett says.

Change Takes Time

Barnett doesn't think a switch to coal-based fuels will happen commercially until the country is faced with a stable price of $5 per gallon for gas, and then only if coal gas could provide the same BTU power at a stable price of about $3 a gallon.

The bigger issue pertains to the infrastructure — getting coal-based fuel into a parallel distribution with petro fuels, assuming the oil-based and coal-based fuels couldn't be mixed for technological or regulatory reasons.

"This will be hugely expensive, at least at first and the government will likely have to fund that," Barnett says.

Any transition to coal-based fuel may in fact be led by Asian or European nations, who have less indigenous oil, more available coal, and a growing demand for fuels of all kinds. One thing is certain: Aviation is not likely to be the leader.

"The aviation industry, whose major focus is on safety, is remarkably cautious," Barnett said.

* * *

Douglas Page is a science/technology writer based in Pine Mountain, CA.

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Japan and the Start of World War II – The Right Lesson from The Wrong Wars

By Ned Barnett
(c) 2008

Japan started its war with the United States knowing that it couldn’t win a prolonged war of attrition – at least those at the highest levels of the Imperial Navy knew they couldn’t win – yet they were confident of victory nonetheless. Though this isn’t a contraction, it might sound like one unless you understand that Japan learned the Right Lesson from the Wrong Wars. In looking at the United States as a potential adversary, they saw us settling for far less than total victory in the First World War – and if they looked further, they saw the same inclination to settle for less than the crushing defeat of their adversaries in the American defeat of Spain in 1898. What they should have done is look at the American Civil War, the War with Mexico or the American Revolution – if they had, they might have decided to attack a preoccupied Soviet Union (as the Imperial Army wanted) instead of what Yamamoto referred to prophetically as the “Sleeping Giant.”

Japan’s naval strategy against America was simple – quickly and decisively inflict such painful losses – then sustain those losses over such an extended period of time – that the U.S. would choose to negotiate an end to the Pacific War. America would do this either to focus on a war with Germany or merely because, as a “soft” democracy, we couldn’t stomach the ongoing losses in blood and materiel. After all, Japan reasoned, liberating the Philippines – a set of islands we’d already promised to give back to their inhabitants in 1946 – hardly seemed like a reason for America to bleed itself dry. As for fighting and dying in the vast reaches of the Western Pacific to help Europe hang onto its East Asian colonial empires seemed even more far-fetched – American was by nature anti-colonial, and no matter how much it might want to preserve the existence of European democratic trading partners against European fascism, there was little indication that we’d fight at all to preserve Europe’s colonial hegemony over East Asian peoples.

There might even be a measure of truth in that assessment. Perhaps, if Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbor, perhaps if Japan had quickly offered to give back Guam and Wake in the peace negotiations (even as it was conquering those islands) – perhaps Japan had gone easy on the Philippines – and the Filipinos (including repatriating all the Americans captured in their victorious assault), this scenario might have actually worked. After all, for all the anger the American man-in-the-streets felt about Japan’s brutal subjugation of China, few US citizens were ready, in late 1941, to lay down their lives to protect the “freedom” of a remote and faceless people who had never in history been truly free. If we weren’t ready to help defend our “cousins” in England from Hitler, we were hardly ready to defend the Malays or Indo-Chinese or even the Filipinos against Japan.

This was a reasonable conclusion – at least as far as it went – and Japan had to look no farther than World War I to see America’s proclivity to end bloody and expensive conflicts at the conference table. Versailles was an armistice, after all, not a German surrender. The war ended before the first Allied soldier crossed the line into German territory, and while the German army in the West was broken, it had not yet been defeated when peace replaced war. This told Japan that Western-style democracies did not have the stomach for carrying war to its bitter end, especially in the face of extreme losses. And because, to Japanese eyes, “westerners” were as alike as Americans thought Asiatics to be, Japan might also have considered Czar Nicholas’ armistice-like peace treaty ending the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905.

However, in reaching this conclusion, Japan drew on the wrong examples – and there were many of these examples to draw from. There were other wars in which America chose to end without victory – the Spanish-American war was fought for limited objectives, and during the entire war, Spain itself was never threatened. Even more, many of Spain’s overseas possessions were left in Spanish hands – something that would never have happened in a fight to the death, which was the Japanese style of warfare (or at least, that’s how the saw themselves).

The lessons were there to be learned, and – by equal measures of wishful thinking and ignorance, the Japanese learned these lessons, not realizing that they were wrong.

Instead of looking at wars in which America voluntarily participated without the extreme provocation of a pre-war attack attack, Japan should have looked at those three previous wars in which America felt it had been attacked: The American Revolution, the Mexican War and the Civil War. In those wars, the American reaction to attack laid the groundwork for our response to Japan in World War II. The outcome need not have been a surprise to those who studied American military history – and, because of the open nature of American democracy, those lessons were freely available to all who approached them eyes-open.

In the first of those examples, America believed that it had been attacked and was being occupied by a tyrannical imperial army – a belief that, thanks to the extreme measures put forth by King George, were not far from the truth. More important, America realized that any compromise would leave those hated British troops in place in the 13 colonies – the only way to rid North America of British military occupying forces was to win. This gave the American colonists something to fight for: a victory so comprehensive that no British soldiers would be standing on North American soil south of the St. Laurence River. Fight they did, and through a fortuitous mixture of remarkable generalship, French naval intervention, a few bad decisions by Cornwallis and more than a soupcon of raw good luck, America’s revolutionary patriots won the war, and the peace. It was no armistice that America signed with Great Britain, but an unequivocal statement that the Americans had won. In this war, America did not invade Great Britain nor did we occupy their capital – neither of these bold steps were necessary for victory to be achieved.

The lesson for history here is plain: When America feels its very survival as a nation-state is at risk, it will fight on without quarter, and it will keep fighting until it wins. Freedom is more important than the blood-price we may have to achieve to win and hold onto that freedom.

In the second example, roughly sixty or so years later, America believed that it was attacked by Mexican soldiers operating inside the boundaries of the American state of Texas (a former Mexican province whose departure from Mexico had never fully been accepted by that superb Mexican General (and “founding father” President) Santa Ana. Latter day historians – as well as many contemporary Whig politicians, including a young Abe Lincoln – believe that the attack on American soil was trumped up, or at least intentionally provoked. But that truth is immaterial to how we fought that war. Having been violated in such a fashion, America was not interested in an armistice, a negotiated peace. Long-term veteran General Winfield Scott – a 300-plus pound giant of a man nicknamed “Old Fuss and Feathers” – led a remarkably successful invasion of Mexico, following the route of Cortez 300 years earlier to capture the Mexican capital, Mexico City, where he dictated terms to a desperate and fearful government. This was a remarkable campaign, fought against great odds, winning for Scott the accolade from no less than Lord Wellington (the victor over Napoleon) that – as demonstrated in his campaign from Vera Cruz to Mexico City, Scott had proved that he was the best general of the age.

The larger conclusion here is simple: when America is attacked on its own soil, America will not rest until that enemy has been crushed in battle and his capital occupied.

Let’s now look at the final and most telling example of what the Japanese could have – and should have – expected from the United States. Barely 15 years after the Mexican War came the American Civil War. That agonizing four-year conflict offers nothing short of THE single most important lesson for Japan. The bloody Civil war – with more than 600,000 American army fatalities and an unimaginable cost in gold – was a conflict so terrible and decisive that it should have shown Japan this: America at war, when attacked, can and will be a formidable and implacable force, and will demand an unrestrained and unremitting outcome to that conflict. The American Civil War began with an unprovoked cannon shot at Ft. Sumter in Charleston harbor, South Carolina – and from Day One, President Lincoln’s war goals had been simple and unambiguous:

• Defeat the Confederate ground armies decisively, completely and beyond recall

• Achieve the complete and utter elimination of the so-called government of the Confederate States of America

• Occupy the territory formerly part of the CSA and force the reintegration of that territory of the USA, eliminating once and for all any possible threat to America’s survival AS the United States of America

Lincoln was so adamant on the latter goal that he never even admitted that the CSA existed – he refused to “treat” with it’s officially-appointed representatives, including his personal friend and former Congressional colleague, who’d been sent North to establish ground rules for a “just peace” that would recognize the existence of the CSA. Lincoln would not bend on defeat – or even on the existence (let alone survival) of the CSA – and Japan should have paid attention

At other times, in other wars, America and American soldiers had expressed other goals far short of total victory – today, for instance, American troops seem more focused on infrastructure rebuilding following a forced regime change than they do on total victory in Iraq. But the Civil War was different, and the beginnings of the Pacific War mirror the Civil War far more than any war we’d fought for “limited objectives.”

In the four years from 1861-to-1865, the prevailing American will – the will for our nation to survive – had been found, largely because of the way that Japan initiated and initially fought the war. In World War II the thought of an armistice, while attractive to a minority of Americans, clearly left the majority of citizens cold. To an almost remarkable extent, Americans supported the war effort in World War II – and because it had the lesson of the American Civil War to guide it, Japan should have seen this result coming, and realized what it meant for them.

In the American Civil War, it was not enough for Lincoln (as it was for the Continental Congress) to gain a treaty recognizing America’s right to exist as a free nation. In that war, it was not enough for Lincoln to occupy the enemy’s capital city and dictate terms of the peace, as had been the case in the Mexican War. In the American Civil War, with our national survival at stake, for Lincoln and the Union Army, only the utter destruction of the Confederacy would be sufficient as an end to this war.

The war began when American Union forces were attacked, on undisputedly American soil (a Federal Fort in Charleston Harbor that had never been turned over to Confederate forces) – by surprise, without warning or a declaration of war – in the pre-dawn hours. That demonstrated a callous disregard for America, and Americans have never been a people to lightly forget that it had been sneak-attacked. The end result of that sneak attack was the total destruction of the nation-state of The Confederate States of America, the complete elimination of its army and the occupation of the total land-mass of enemy territory. Nothing short of this would be acceptable to the majority of Americans, no matter what the blood-price they’d be asked to pay.

THAT is the war the Japanese should have studied in assessing America’s martial policy – and THAT is the kind of outcome that Japan should have expected. No armistice was possible – if Japan couldn’t defeat America’s army and occupy the country’s territory, Japan should have known that American war planners would find a way of destroying Japan’s army, crushing its government beyond recall and harshly occupying Japan’s territory. No other, lesser, outcome could have been (or should have been) anticipated.

Japan knew it couldn’t win so decisively that it could wipe out all US armed forces, move it’s army half-way around the world, march across the continent and sack Washington DC, then occupy the entire land-mass of the United States until decisive regime-change had been achieved. Those goals were literally impossible to a country that had been unable to occupy and subjugate China across a short strait of sea miles. But Japan should have also known that if it could not inflict those harsh realities on America, then America would not rest until it had done all of that to Japan.

Japan’s military leaders had studied the wrong American war and learned the wrong lessons about how America fights wars. America was – as Yamamoto indicated – a “sleeping giant,” and Japan would have been wise to let her remain asleep, dreaming peaceful dreams about isolationism and the impenetrable sea barrier that protected America from potential enemies. The unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor, followed by the brutal subjugation of the Philippines and the incredibly harsh treatment meted out to captured American soldiers, made it clear to all who’d care to look why Roosevelt – as leaders of the American people – could not and would not settle for anything less than the complete defeat of Japanese armed forces, the total destruction of Japan as a nation,, followed by a brutal and long term occupation of the Empire of Japan.

This, of course, has lessons for today. After 9/11, we imposed regime change on Afghanistan (the nation-state most closely linked with the terrorists), we destroyed the Taliban field army, and we occupied the nation itself. In Iraq, with no such smoking gun of responsibility, we stopped far short – and find ourselves in a position where an armistice would be most welcome. Yet if the terrorists strike again as they did on 9/11, they will awaken a sleeping giant – they will unite the country behind a war-leader and suffer the consequences. Perhaps the terrorists were smarter than the Japanese – perhaps they know this about America. After all, their few and feeble attempts since 9/11 suggest that they know the risks – right now – of giving American war leaders reason and opportunity to once again unite America in an unlimited war against the terrorists.

Panzer-in-a-Box - The German A7V Tank in World War I

Panzer-in-a-Box
(c) 2008 - Ned Barnett

Considering the remarkably innovative use Germany found for armored fighting vehicles in World War II, it is little short of incredible that 20 years before they launched the world’s first Blitzkrieg, German military leaders so ineptly handled their first experience with Panzers as to make you think they’d never “get it.” It’s hard to picture the French as innovators in armored warfare and the Germans as near-pathetic “also-rans” forced to create tank units out of captured vehicles, but General Petain “got it” while General Ludendorf considered tanks a passing fad, not worthy of real consideration. As a result, while the Allies fielded literally thousands of tanks in World War I, the Germans managed to field … dozens.

Which brings us to this book:

German Panzers 1914-1918
Osprey “New Vanguard #127” – © 2006
By Stephen J. Zaloga – Illustrated by Brian Delf
Reviewed by Ned Barnett
Review Copy Supplied by Reviewer

Considering the remarkably innovative use Germany found for armored fighting vehicles in World War II, it is little short of incredible that 20 years before they launched the world’s first Blitzkrieg, German military leaders so ineptly handled their first experience with Panzers as to make you think they’d never “get it.” It’s hard to picture the French as innovators in armored warfare and the Germans as near-pathetic “also-rans” forced to create tank units out of captured vehicles, but General Petain “got it” while General Ludendorf considered tanks a passing fad, not worthy of real consideration. As a result, while the Allies fielded literally thousands of tanks in World War I, the Germans managed to field … dozens.

Except for a few brief paragraphs that tantalize without fulfilling, this otherwise excellent book does not cover how Germany went from being the last one to get the word in 1916 to 1918, al the way to being the most progressive and innovative user of tank armies in the world in 1939-43. That kind of story is best covered in a book on the overall development of tank warfare in the first half of the 20th Century – there are a few good ones out there, including “Tank,” a remarkably thoughtful book on tank warfare development, as well as several good biographies of German General Guderian, the mastermind of the armored Blitzkrieg.

But the abject failure of Imperial Germany’s flirtation with armored warfare is a worthy subject in itself, and that’s the focus of this book. With his expertise in the entire history of armored warfare, few authors are better positioned to address Germany’s first experience with tanks than author Stephen J. Zaloga.

There’s an old saw about how “Success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan” – and that can be said about the development of the tank. Clearly, then First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had a hand in the development of “Mother,” the world’s first tank – a kind of “land ship” that would give the Royal Navy something to fight with while the fleet hunkered down at Scapa Flow, waiting for the Imperial German Navy to come out and fight. Some claim that it was Churchill himself who coined the name “tank” – implying a mobile water tank used for bringing drinking water supplies to troops at the front – as a kind of ruse. However, technology leading up to the first tank was well in-hand nearly a decade before the start of World War I – but it took bloody trench warfare and a military stalemate with no seeming end in sight to push forward the development of the tank in 1915 and 1916.

”Mother” – the first Mk. I tank – was a “rhomboid”-shaped tank designed to cross trenches and shell-holes, carrying machine guns and their crews toward the enemy while protecting them with bullet-resistant (but not artillery-proof) armor. Because the machine gun had become queen of the battlefield – in the process, freezing all offensive progress – it became imperative to take a machine gun “to the enemy” in support of attacking ground troops. The notion of carrying artillery forward – let alone the idea of tank vs. tank combat – was not considered at first. The tank – like poison gas – was designed to end the stalemate and return armies to wars of movement. Some even hoped (vainly, and rather stupidly) that this would lead to the return of the cavalry as a viable military force.

Of course, the British got it all wrong. Not mechanically – “Mother” and her offspring, most notably the Mk. IV – were about as mechanically effective as the crude automotive technology of the era would permit. No, they blew it tactically – and since there was no real precedent, that’s neither particularly surprising nor particularly damning. But the troops weren’t trained to work with Mother – they had no idea about supporting the tanks, nor were they ready to exploit the breakthroughs the tanks could produce. Their piecemeal introduction at the Somme had almost no impact on the battle, but they did tip their hand to the Germans – who might have launched their own aggressive tank-building program, but who instead focused on creating anti-tank large-caliber rifles and converting 77 mm quick-firing field artillery pieces into crudely effective anti-tank cannons.

By the time of Cambrai, the Brits finally got it right. Sort of right, anyway.

They put a lot of tanks into the field at one time, and some of the troops were even trained to work with these tanks – giving the British Army’s new tank corps the chance to make a difference. Because of the size of their attack and because of some initial infantry support, their breakthrough was monumental by World War I proportions – five miles in some places. But of course mistakes happened, reinforcements were not rushed into the breach and the Germans recaptured most of the lost ground within a day. Because of this, General Ludendorf – often an innovator himself – totally overlooked the tank’s potential, and kept the German tank-development program at a very low priority. Instead, he had his forces scour the Cambrai battlefield and recover broken-down Mk. IV tanks – these were restored and became a major part of the German’s overall tank force.

Back at the home front, German tank designers and Army officials were making a series of disastrous decisions about tank design – or, they would have been disastrous if tank production ever got any kind of reasonable priority. But because Germany produced fewer than 30 tanks during the war, the fact that they were flawed designs really didn’t matter all that much. In a war with millions of soldiers and a 500-mile trench-to-trench front line, the impact of even 30 great tanks would have been limited. But the German tanks weren’t great – even by the standards of the day, they weren’t even particularly good. Instead of mimicking the trench-crossing abilities of the British “rhomboid” tanks, German tank designs were based on the commercial Holt-Caterpillar track-laying system.

This was a huge mistake – one repeated by the French in their St. Chamond and Schneider tanks, but avoided by their revolutionary, rhomboid-like Renault FT-17 light tank. This was a mistake which ensured that the A7V would be unable to cross any but the smallest trenches and shell-holes – and considering the terrain conditions prevalent on the Western Front, this track design decision was foolish and self-defeating – and unnecessary. Because the Brits tipped their hand at the Somme in 1916, the Germans already knew what kind of design could be counted on to effectively cross trenches and shell holes.

As noted, fewer than two dozen German tanks were built in a three-year AFV development program; more captured British and French tanks were put into German service than were produced by Germany, though the Germans did not formally use any French tanks in combat (some French-built tanks may have been used on-the-spot by those soldiers who captured them, but none were incorporated into established German tank units). However, compared to British and French production efforts, this was a drop in the bucket – far too few German tanks were manufactured to have any but the most limited tactical impact.

For instance, Germany’s largest single tank assault, in early 1918, involved just 13 A7V tanks, several of which broke down before they could cross the start-line and enter combat. Within a few weeks of this limited assault, Britain launched a tank attack with more than 400 tanks – and around the same time, France launched the world’s largest tank assault to date, committing nearly 500 tanks to the attack. Earlier in the war, at Cambrai, the British had abandoned more tanks on the field of combat – due primarily to mechanical breakdowns, and only secondarily to effective German anti-tank efforts – than all the tanks built by Germany throughout the entire war. Ironically, as noted above, these British tanks, once captured and refurbished, outnumbered A7Vs in the ranks of German armored fighting vehicles.

Although the A7V looked ungainly in the extreme, it was not without merits. For instance, it had two engines instead of one, and as a result it had a greater turn of speed than the British Mk. IV rhomboid. However, the radiators were inside the tank’s fighting compartment, raising temperatures inside to above 150 degrees F. In addition, each A7V was armed with a captured British-built Nordenfelt quick-fire 57mm cannon – a weapon that, based on limited records of tank-to-tank combat in World War I, was superior to the British 6-pounder cannon found on the “male” tanks (but not the “female” tanks, which had machine-gun armament but no cannons, making them useless in tank vs. tank combat). Again the however – the fumes from all these guns were so intense that the large crews had to wear gas masks. These, along with the intense heat, made serving in a German tank an agony, even when not in combat.

But it was in combat that the A7V stood out as something more than a large target. Though it may have been only coincidence – there were so few tank vs. tank combats in World War I that this is possible – in each encounter between Allied and German tanks, the Germans came out on top. This applies even to combats where captured British tanks were used by Germany, reinforcing the possibility of coincidence. Zaloga’s book details each of these very limited number of tank vs. tank combats; in total, A7Vs destroyed fewer than a dozen Allied tanks, but in those very few encounters, when they faced down British Mk. IV “male” gun-tanks, they tended to win. Of course, and unsurprisingly, the A7Vs dominated all combats against machine-gun armed Mk IV “female” tanks.

In all cases – and there were only a few instances of tank vs. tank combat in the First World War – mechanical breakdowns did more damage than did the enemy tanks. Even when they won, the A7Vs had to be hauled directly to the repair shops for a rebuild. A single day’s combat tended to wear them out mechanically, even if the tanks suffered no battle damage.

Beyond their limited number, German A7V battle tanks showed the apparently inherent German penchant for gigantism – a tendency that culminated late in World War II with the fielding of the grossly oversized and mechanically unreliable SturmTiger, and the even larger, thankfully never-operational monster, the E-100 Maus. However, as author Stephen Zaloga points out, the 18-to-24-man A7V was “pint-sized” compared to the proposed German K-wagen, a 150-ton monster tank that, even when downsized to a “mere” 100 tons was far larger than the mechanical abilities of the time could support. Fortunately for their designated crews, no K-wagens were completed. However, the effort to construct them diverted scarce resources into a futile effort – a self-defeating move that was revisited in Germany a generation later.

In 1944 – which paralleled their actions in 1918 to a remarkable degree – Germany spread scarce resources over the construction of too many designs that were too big, too expensive, too cumbersome and too mechanically unreliable to stand up to the rigors of combat. In spite of combat-worthy and cost-effective late-war designs, such as the Hetzer and the JagdPanzer IV, Germany pressed ahead with the King Tiger and Panther II, the SturmTiger and the E-100. Focus on more effective designs after June of 1944 would not have won them the war, but considering the successes of German “ambush tanks,” they would have prolonged the fighting and forced the Allies to pay a far higher blood-price.

Taking this a step further, if – during World War II – Germany had focused on matching the Russians and Americans tank-for-tank by producing a large quantity of good-enough tanks (instead of striving for world-beating designs that were expensive in terms of time and resources and challenging mechanically), the outcome of the war itself could have been different. Too many times, the Germans had almost enough panzers to win a battle – but almost only counts in horseshoes, not in combat. There are no prizes awarded for “Second Place” in tank vs. tank battles. Bottom line: the roots of this war-losing World War II tank development strategy – a strategy of developing too many designs that were too big, too complex and too few in (production) number can be found in Germany’s World War I tank program, as this book amply demonstrates.

This book is absolutely typical of the popular Osprey “New Vanguard” style – 48 pages, extensively photo-illustrated, with 8 pages of color plates illustrating markings, internal structure and captured Allied tanks impressed into German service. Modelers and historians will find this book a useful introduction to German armored warfare in World War I.

Assault Weapons - True Story of a Mythical Weapon

Ned Barnett © 2008

Since some time in the 1980s, “assault weapons” have been the camel’s nose of the gun-banning crowd, and the love-to-hate-em darlings of the mainstream, left-leaning media.

But there’s a problem with that. Except for these anti-gun advocates, “assault weapons” have no independent existence. The term itself was made up by the media and anti-gun crowd as a simple way of mis-identifying a variety of different kinds of legal weapons.

The term “assault weapon” sounds dangerous. Military. Hostile. Surely, nothing that peaceful hunters or sportsmen might need or want (here’s another code of the anti-gun left: Only “hunters” and “sportsmen” might actually want to own guns of any kind, and the guns they want to own ought to have some utility in either hunting or target shooting in order to be “legitimate.”).

In fact, the Second Amendment makes no mention at all about hunting or sports shooting – it refers to self defense and communal self defense (a noble and important goal), and not a hobby activity akin to bass fishing or stamp collecting.

But I digress. To explain, a bit of history is needed.

In military terms, there are “battle rifles” and “assault rifles” – but no “assault weapons.” Traditionally, “battle rifles” are military-caliber bolt-action or semi-automatic (i.e., self-loading) rifles, heavily-stocked, equipped to mount a bayonet and a sling, and used by infantry as their primary weapon. Shorter, lighter weapons (carbines, mostly) were carried by Infantry officers or by soldiers who were not infantrymen, but who might in a pinch need to shoot back
(tank crewmen, cooks, truck drivers, etc.). From the end of the Civil War to mid-1943, all military rifles were essentially either “battle rifles” or carbines.

The rifle-looking BAR and similar selective-fire weapons were classed as squad-level machine guns. The other common infantry weapon, the sub-machine guns – light, hand-held full auto/selective fire weapons shooting pistol ammo - were also considered in a separate class, more like a super-pistol than a mini-rifle (in fact, the Germans called sub-machine guns “machine pistols”). They were used primarily by infantry officers and senior NCOs, often instead of carbines.

But in 1943, the ever-adaptive Germans developed a new weapon – a selective fire rifle that could fire in full-automatic mode (i.e., like a machine gun or a sub-machine gun), using rifle-caliber ammunition – intended primarily for the inner-city urban combat that would become ever more common as German soldiers fell back on der Vaterland (the Fatherland) in defense of the Reich. This new weapon was most closely akin to a “battle rifle” in intent, being seen as the primary weapon of infantry. It fired a new rifle-style bullet (smaller than the standard rifle bullet, but still far more potent than pistol or carbine ammo). And it could fire in either semi-auto or full-auto mode. It was built robustly, like a battle rifle, but it was stockier (shorter), to make it handier in urban settings.

And because the Germans hated the idea of retreat, they named this new weapon an “assault rifle.” Not an “assault weapon,” mind you, but an “assault rifle.”

As designed, the primary difference between a “battle rifle” and an “assault rifle” was primarily the full-auto selective fire capability. Nobody would call a weapon that shot only on semi-auto an “assault rifle” no matter how it looked - it was only functionality that defined the new weapon.

This last point is important - remember it, because you’ll see it again.

This new German weapon of 1943, adapted for urban combat (with generally shorter ranges) could fire more bullets, faster, than a battle rifle – but it had less range, and, because of it’s shorter barrel, it had (especially at longer ranges) less accuracy. But it made up for these limitations with handiness and firepower volume.

After the war (even before the war ended, in the case of the Russians), this weapon began to be modeled and adapted by the Allies. First out of the block was the Russian Kalashnikov AK-47 semi/full-auto assault rifle – a rugged weapon that shot a cut-down rifle round, and which became the “standard” for communist block and third-world countries (and terrorists) for the next 50 years.

The US took a series of steps – first the M1 Garand battle rifle became the selective-fire M14 battle rifle – still full-frame, shooting a full-bore rifle bullet, but with the firepower potential of the BAR squad light machine gun.

Next, Colt developed what led to the M16 assault rifle (a lightweight, short and handy rifle shooting a hefty, beefed-up mega-.22 caliber round that mikes out at .223). For 40 years now, the M16 has been the standard for the US and many of its allies - a powerful, flexible and handy assault rifle.

Going back to a law passed in the US in 1934 (and affirmed and revised in 1964), full-automatic rifles (including sub-machine guns and machine guns) have been very tightly regulated. Except for collectors and museums (and with a few other very tightly controlled exceptions), nobody could own an operational full-automatic weapon.

What this means is that EVERY legitimate “assault rifle” ever made is illegal for casual ownership in the US, and has been since a full ten years before the first “assault rifle” was ever developed.

The M16 and the AK-47 are both - in their military configurations – illegal, and always have been. And in spite of the hype, almost no fully-automatic “assault rifles” have ever been in private hands here in the US. Those that were in private hands (of criminals, for instance), were already illegal before they were first designed (for purely military and police use).

So, in any rational sense, there was not only never an “assault weapon” in the US, but there was never a time when the similarly-named “assault rifle” was not already illegal for private ownership.

Enter the gun-banners and their media fellow-travelers.

They desperately wanted to get their noses inside the tent – to ban SOME KIND of firearm that wasn’t already illegal. But they were stuck.

Too many Americans (there are roughly 80 million gun owners in the US) already owned semi-automatic (a.k.a. “self-loading) rifles, shotguns and pistols, most used for hunting, collecting or home self-defense. Further, the manufacture of these guns was concentrated in New England, where a ban would cause a serious economic hardship that would be easy for the media and the public to identify.

What to do? What to do?

So they came up with a diabolically-brilliant idea. Take a small category of weapons – semi-automatic rifles that cosmetically LOOKED like military assault rifles – and make them “bad.” So they gave these perfectly legal rifles – mechanically no different from Ruger .22 target rifles or Winchester hunting rifles – and (because they looked somehow “military”) make them the whipping boys for the industry.

Make them so hated that laws could be passed – nose-in-the-tent laws – that even most average gun owners wouldn’t object to.

So the media created this fictional category – “assault weapons” – that defined not design, not use, but cosmetic appearance. Then the anti-gunners and the media were able to punish this “bad” kid of weapon by banning their importation.

That’s right – they didn’t ban the manufacture, sale or ownership of these “evil” things, these “assault weapons.” Nope – that might hurt American jobs.

All the law did was ban the importation (and subsequent sale) of otherwise legal semi-automatic rifles that merely LOOKED like they were military-issue assault rifles.

That’s all.

No sales were banned.

No ownership was banned.

No manufacture was banned.

Only importation was banned.

That’s right, the “assault weapon ban” was a fraud.

It didn’t take one “assault weapon” (which doesn’t really exist) off the street. All it did was ensure that all the new, fully legal semi-automatic rifles sold in the US were also manufactured in the US – in a way, it was a jobs protection act for US gun-makers. And it made sure that America was protected from semi-automatic rifles that somehow LOOK as if they are military rifles (but aren’t) – at least those that were manufactured overseas, rather than in the USA.

Don’t you feel safer?

It’s a joke, sure – but in spite of it being a joke, the gun-banners won. Sure, it’s a hollow victory for now. But their victory opens the door for banning other classes of legal guns.

Recently, Senator Kerry and other anti-gun legislators co-sponsored a failed piece of legislation that – if passed – would have dramatically expanded this ban, to include US-made firearms of kinds that, until now, have been perfectly legal. These banned firearms (rifles and shotguns) don’t even “LOOK” military – but they are semi-automatic/self-loading firearms, and that encompasses a huge number of legally-owned private weapons, as well as tens of thousands of US manufacturing jobs.

But that’s not about “assault weapons,” which don’t really exist – except in the vivid imaginations of anti-gunners and their media and legislative supporters.